The great churchman we forgot

ARCHBISHOP Denis Hurley, OMI, who died suddenly in Durban, South Africa, last February, was well known in Ireland.

He had done his novitiate as an Oblate of Mary Immaculate here in the early 1930s, spent some weeks here as a young bishop raising funds for his mission schools in 1950 and frequently came to Ireland in subsequent years, especially to visit the families of his father, also Denis, and mother, Theresa O’Sullivan, in Skibbereen.

But he was even better known and admired here for his outspoken leadership of the South African Catholic bishops against apartheid, and for the progressive role he played at the Second Vatican Council.